Only treat problems that you have. Vinegar and baking soda, though acidic and alkaline, are not practical to adjust your pH. My suggestion would be to quit using that until you can get some actual pH adjusters. Try to harvest some rain or snow water in the meantime. Do not worry about pH or adding ferts, just continue feeding your plants plain water from the same source so as to not have changes in pH. pH fluctuation is very stressful to the plant. It is exhibited often by twisted leaves, especially new growth. Don't think that your plants need food everyday. They will be fine off of just soil for several weeks without any food. I usually don't start adding nitrogen to my plants until after 3 weeks, but I use FFOF soil.
When it comes to flushing, your plants aren't going to just spring up the next day. The entire point is to just wash away the excess salts and nutes that the plant cannot uptake. The leaves that are dead are dead, they will not come back. Droopy leaves that are healthy green are most likely over-watered or under-watered, or suffering from temp or humidity issues. If you can find some dried up crackly leaves towards the bottom of the plant and the leaves are droopy it is probably under-watered, if they look glossy green and are drooping it is probably over-watered.
Roots do not stop growing through flowering.
As a cutting roots, the leaves will begin to root, yellow, dry and die off. This is normal. You will not have a 100% success rate probably, but some will root. Try to wait 2 weeks before you look at them the first time.
Thanks for the help. +rep
There really hasn't been any signs of fluctuation since I started adjusting the pH in the water. The distilled water I was using was under 6.0, not sure how much though as my tester only goes down to 6.0. The spring water I'm using now has a pH of approx 7.6. I have no way of collecting the snow while it melts (no rain this time of year where I am) so I have to stick with bottled water for now, and I haven't found one that comes at 6.5 or anywhere near it.
I've only fed once this entire grow (6th week just started). I took some bad advice and mixed the dirt too hot (FFOF + 2 tablespoons of Bone Meal + 2 tablespoons of Blood Meal). I guess I should have flushed a long time ago, but I only recently got enough one gallon jugs to do a flush with tap water. And I was hoping that the plants would eventually get big enough to handle it, but I guess I'm wrong.
No leaves died yet, just brown tips and on the NY Diesel the brown is spreading a bit and on a lot more leaves.
The green leaves aren't drooping right now, some just have tips that are curling under. I've yet to find an explination for it, but I don't think it's overwatering. If I saw dead or dried leaves I'd think it was underwatering, but there are no dried leaves.
I didn't expect the flush to do anything except stop the nute burns. I'm sure the plant will droop for a little while afterwards.
I don't think it's temp. I've kept it at 80 degrees at the tops of the pots until just a few hours ago when I turned one of the lights off. It's now 68 degrees at the tops of the pots. Humidity is a different matter, it's 30% to 40% which is as hi as I can get it with 1 humidifier. I've been told that during veg 80% is optimal but I have no way of getting it that hi. Could that be the cause of the leaves that are curling under at the tips?
Thanks for the info on the roots. Do you know if the flush will flush out the Mycorrhiza that I added to the soil? I need to know if I need to retreat them.
Thanks also for the info on the rooting clones. The only ones that have rotted are the ones where the branches were laying on the plugs. I guess I have to keep that from happening, thank goodness it's only a few. Some of them will root though?